Komli Ad Network Review

Komli is a ‘premium’ ad network from India. I thought of writing this review mainly because 35% of my reader community is from India or Indians settled abroad. It is probably useful for others as well because that is the same cause for which Komli stands – they are targeting up to 40% of the international ad traffic that is India bound.

What exactly is Komli?

Komli started their operations in 2006 and what they offer is a CPM ad network program and hence not exactly an AdSense alternative. Focusing only on Pay-Per-Impression advertising is probably the best workable model in India. There are not too many online ad networks in this country yet and hence they are positioned well to capture a good market. There are however, new players like iBibo who are soon going to venture into the online ad space.

Sign-up process

The sign up process with Komli is extremely simple. You just need to fill out a one pager providing your site name, address details and estimated traffic. They will get back to you within one business day with the approval. One of the things I liked about their welcome mail is that there were two simple PDF documents attached to the mail that explains neatly how to set up your ads and also how to use the reporting features.

Ad-script creation and usage

The ad setup page or ‘Tags’ page as they call it, is one of the simplest I have ever seen. You just need to select the ad size and you get your script ready. There couple of advanced settings as well, which they could have explained well on this page itself, but in most cases you won’t use them.

Once you paste your ad code on your pages, on that instant itself you start seeing your ads. This is another good thing where major players like AdBrite take up to three hours before ads are shown. The reason here is very simple – Komli is not a context-aware program and hence no need of crawling and caching your site before ads are served.

Reporting features

Although revenue reporting again is mostly a one-page affair, they could have done away with a number of checkboxes that the user has to select to see the revenue reports. It looks like; it is designed for developers rather than layman. However, the good thing is that what you get to see first is a nice dashboard that shows your revenue trend and eCPM (estimated Cost Per thousand impressions)

The story so far?

I started using Komli only 48 hours back. Although, it is such a short time to evaluate the returns, I had a chance to compare it with AdBrite as both appear on one page. At the moment the eCPM from both are not vastly different (Much less than $1.00 per thousand unique impressions) and obviously not the best you can get. However, they have two CPM products for publishers off which I could not utilize the high traffic ‘Premium Network’ – Probably that is better in terms of returns.

As for the payment, Komli has both check and PayPal options for you to receive your eanings. The minimum payout is $20 or INR 800 and there is a 45 days of delay (Net45) before the monthly payments are sent out.

What I liked and what I didn’t

The approval process, setup procedure and customer support have been very friendly. However if they have to maintain leadership in the local market they also need to improve a couple of things:

The ad serving speed is not really the best – Mostly my Komli ads get loaded 2 seconds after that of AdBrite etc. Also, I found that some banner ads don’t have the desired quality in terms of their design and clarity. Unfortunately there is no control for publishers of the ‘performance program’ to control what they want to display nor they are any category or keyword selection possible. The good thing, though is that they have no adult or rated ads served on to your site.

Also, I would have liked to have a referral program from their side which could have given additional boon to the affiliates. I shall post more about Komli as I start getting more results and in the meantime you may visit Komli.com or compare it with other ad networks using D$ Comparator

Update: Later, I realized that the eCPM figures mentioned above are not in USDs but in Indian Rupees. Hence earnings from Komli is pathetic indeed. Read the comments below for more details.

Komli is actually not CPM, its performance based. i mean for conversions you get money. recently they changed their criteria to Minimum Payout is 2500 INR and Publishers must provide 5 lakhs impressions per month.

They paying on time, very decent communications, they now paying through NEFT .

I get nearly 1000 unique visits/day and 5000 page loads/day. I run mp3 site. Last week i have choosen ozone media.
After seeing first day’s results i was shocked. around 3000 impressions and earned 5.5Rs. This is terrible.
Means Rs.1.7 per 1000 impressions.
I have contacted them via mail. I have to admit some other ad network if i see unsatisfactory reply from them.

Hey … Ajit
I like Ur site very much , can u refer me some good affiliate program, which really pays … Plz. I have a blog djfunmaza blogspot.in and i want to earn some money from it . So i need ur help and guidance. For Which i will be thankful to you.

@Sakash, not sure what type of affiliate programs work with your type of content. The problem is that movie and music download sites may not get approved by front line affiliate schemes. Since most of the content is of Indian music, try Indian affiliate programs like Shaadi.com etc

Hi Ajith,
I am currently runing adense for my webstie for my website but it is giving very low eCPM of 0.06. Please suggest which could be better alternative to adsense. I am having 90% of traffic coming from India.

If your eCPM is 0.06, your AdSense account may be smart priced. Are you running several blogs under the same AdSense account? If 90% of the traffic is Indian, then you may be low on eCPM but not as low as you mentioned.

Please don;t try Komli its the worst paying Ad network. I have 200+ visitors a day and i have been running komli ads for 15 days and my earnings are only 5.6 Rs. Where as i made $1 using adbrite.
Try Adbrite and Smowtion they are way better. Though i dont find quality advertisers i am getting paid $1, if u have abt 500+ visitors u may b getting paid high using adbrite. It is the best alternative to adsense

Hi Ajith, I just approved from Komli and as you shared that their ads are slowing down the site that is true, and also the payment procedure, publisher has to send the hard copy of invoice of every month to their postal address whether somebody wants paypal or cheque, which is quite sad.
Anyways thank for sharing it

Well, that’s the case with even Google AdSense right? They sent only cheques to Indian subscribers. By the way, I am not too much into ad services of late. Any income that I am making is only via affiliate product banners on my sites.

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About this Blog & Blogger

I am Ajith Edassery, an Internet Marketer from Bangalore. I quit my High-paid job in the Software Industry to pursue Blogging, Internet Marketing and other Home-based money making opportunities. Read more...